Health Counsel, Wigs, and the Reform Dress

#120 & #121: "But her belief was that these sexual appetites could be controlled
by diet. First she gave
a list of foods to avoid. 'Mince pies, cakes, preserves, and highly seasoned meats, with
gravies... create a
feverish condition in the system and inflame the animal passions... dispense with animal
foods, and use
grains, vegetables, and fruits as articles of diet.' A Solemn Appeal pp.
65-66."—Dan Snyder.

#120: She said animal foods inflame the
animal passions. This quotation is out of context. The impression is left that
this quote
says all animal foods inflame the animal passions. In reality, what it says is
that highly seasoned meats, not all meats, inflame the
passions.

The first ellipsis shouldn't be there. The second ellipsis represents an omission of eight
and a half sentences. Here's the last part that was
left out:

In order to strengthen in them the moral perceptions, the love of spiritual things, we
must regulate the manner of our living, dispense with animal
food, and use grains, vegetables, and fruits, as articles of diet.

Thus while highly seasoned meats inflame the passions, a vegetarian
diet would help to strengthen the moral perceptions.

What about the part about preserves and cakes? Mrs. White a number of times
elsewhere referred to "rich cakes and preserves" not being
best for us (e.g. Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4a, p. 130). Likewise, what she is
talking about here is the connection between the "animal passions" and
rich and highly seasoned foods. Today, many people who are not Adventists believe that
avoiding rich foods is an important health practice.
Your physician just may be one of them!

#121: Mrs. White felt that rich foods and highly seasoned foods act as
aphrodisiacs. The problem with either verifying or
disproving the accuracy of her counsel in this area is, "Despite long-standing literary and
popular interest in internal aphrodisiacs, almost no
scientific studies of them have been made."—"aphrodisiac,"
Britannica® CD. So she was
making a pronouncement on a subject that medical
science still has not researched.

As already noted under #118, this is not the only time
she made such statements. Consider also this one from her 1905 book Ministry of
Healing:

Flesh was never the best food; but its use is now doubly objectionable, since disease in
animals is so rapidly increasing. Those who use flesh
foods little know what they are eating. Often if they could see the animals when living and
know the quality of the meat they eat, they would turn
from it with loathing. People are continually eating flesh that is filled with tuberculous and
cancerous germs. Tuberculosis, cancer, and other
fatal diseases are thus communicated.—p. 313, italics added.

This is really remarkable, considering the following:

Rous, pronounced rows, Francis Peyton, pronounced PAY tuhn (1879-1970), an
American medical researcher, proved that viruses cause some
types of cancer. In 1910, Rous ground up a cancerous tumor from a chicken and filtered out
everything larger than a virus. The resulting liquid
produced cancer when injected into other chickens. For many years, scientists scoffed at
Rous's discovery. These scientists believed cancer could
not be caused by a virus because the disease is not contagious. In 1966, Rous shared the
Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his
work.—"Rous, Francis Peyton," World Book Encyclopedia.

In 1910 a maverick scientist proposed that cancer was caused by a virus and could be
transmitted from chicken to chicken. He was
subsequently derided by the scientific community for proposing such a ludicrous idea, and
then waited fifty-six years before [p. 85] getting his Nobel
Prize. Do you suppose that perhaps Mr. Rous "plagiarized" his novel idea from
Ministry of Healing? Should Mrs. White be awarded a Nobel
Prize posthumously?

Want to win a Nobel Prize?

Find a concept in her writings that sounds absurd.

Make sure it's something that can benefit humanity.

Find a way to prove it.

Get ridiculed for proposing such a ludicrous idea.

Wait awhile.

Collect your prize.

It's that simple.

To be fair, it would have been nice if the video had included one of a number of
stories in which Mrs. White's health counsel predated the
findings of science. As Leslie Martin says on the video, "We were taught as Adventists that
we had a special message for the world with our
health message, and that our prophetess Ellen White was years ahead of her time." Though
she may not want to admit it now, what Mrs. Martin
was taught is true.